Flashdance  The Musical' bringing Maniac,' water scene to PlayhouseSquare

Sydney Morton portrays Alex Owens in the tour of "Flashdance -- The Musical" coming to PlayhouseSquare.

Robert Cary grew up in a show-business family in Los Angeles, his mother at one point working as a dancer on “The Carol Burnett Show” and his dad a writer for “Mork & Mindy.”

Cary himself was a dancer growing up, performing with the Joffrey II ballet apprentice company in New York, moving on to study theater at Yale University. After 2000, he transitioned to a focus writing and directing.

That background helps to explain why Cary was hired to help write the musical stage adaptation to the 1983 movie “Flashdance,” about a female welder in Pittsburgh whose dream was to dance. It helps, though, that he was in his early teens when the movie came out and absolutely adored it.

“It kind of was one of the tent poles of my entire adolescence,” says Cary, on the phone from his Connecticut home in the greater New York City area. “It was one of those handful of films that defined the vibe and style of the decade, so I brought that enthusiasm to (the project) as well.”

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Directed by Adrian Lyne, the movie centers on Alexandra “Alex” Owens (Jennifer Beals), an 18-year-old worker at a steel mill who works at night as an exotic dancer but who has bigger dreams.

Cary, credited with co-writing the book with Tom Hedley and the lyrics with Robbie Roth, was brought in on the musical project before Roth to work with Hedley, who co-wrote the movie with Northeast Ohio native Joe Eszterhas and who is credited with its story.

“The challenge in adapting ‘Flashdance’ is (going from) telling a story in close-ups to telling a story in wide shots. And the stage is a wide shot,” Cary says. “What ‘Flashdance’ required was taking that spine of a story and building outward in all directions to fill the necessary space that a theater requires.”

Songs were added, of course, and secondary characters from the movie were expanded, he says.

“That’s a long process,” he says, “and like writing any show (involves) some trial and error and finding out what works and being ready to rewrite.”

Some ingredients — scenes everyone associates with the movie, such as Alex dancing to “Maniac” — had to be included, of course.

“The tightrope you have to walk with something like ‘Flashdance’ is to make it feel it’s been reimagined for the stage but also to make sure people who associate those iconic moments still get them in the show,” Cary says. “The water scene, the way she takes her helmet off, the way she takes her bra off under her sweatshirt are important parts of the movie, so it would be mean of us not to deliver those.”

A tightrope the creative cast decided they need not try to walk was to try to make the show feel all that contemporary. The setting remains 1980s Pittsburgh, and the vibe reflects that, says Cary, starting with the songs.

“The music Robbie Roth has written, I think, does a great job of capturing the flavor of the music of the ’80s without becoming parody or pastiche,” he says. “He’s really, really good. He understands the baselines that really made those songs what they were, and he’s able to use them to make something that works today.

“I don’t think that we’ve tried to contemporize things, because I think what ‘Flashdance’ deals with is timeless,” he adds. “It’s about a girl with a dream who feels like an outsider and is trying to summon the courage to go for her dream, which is not a uniquely 1983 kind of problem to have.

“And the way we speak today isn’t so different from 30 years ago,” he says. “What’s amazing to me is that it doesn’t end up feeling like a period piece, and I don’t quite know why that is.”

“Flashdance — The Musical” debuted in the United Kingdom in 2008, touring the UK before landing in London’s West End in 2010. A planned Broadway run for 2013 has seen delays.

Folks who have seen it appreciate it for how it moves, Cary says.

“I think audiences love shows that really get to dance, and there really aren’t that many of them,” he says. “That’s part of what made ‘Chicago’ such a big hit and, in a totally different way, ‘42nd Street’ years ago. And ‘Flashdance does belong with that pantheon of shows that dances almost continually.”

That means that playing the role of Alex is no easy task — a job being done by Sydney Morton in the tour coming through Cleveland.

“The only role that I can think of that’s remotely comparable is Eva Peron in ‘Evita’ — if Eva Peron also had to do triple pirouettes,” Cary says.

“It is one of the all-time marathon parts, and we’ve been incredibly fortunate to find actresses … who can handle all of the required things,” he says. “This is not just singing — it’s high belting — and God knows this is not just dancing.”

Lastly, he adds, the show is not a “cartoon” and requires real acting.

“This is a show where people behave like people, and our Alex has to deliver that, as well,” he says. “It’s a very high bar, and those ladies who’ve lept across it have earned my admiration, because it’s tough.”

Cary is busy co-writing a show with his husband, Jonathan Tolins, that will use 21 songs from the band ZZ Top as the backbone for a show that isn’t a biographical take on the band but that will instead tell an original story. He said to think about how Abba’s music is used in “Mamma Mia!”

“It’s set in Texas in the ’80s, and it is a full-out rock ’n’ roll comedy musical,” he says, “and I’m very excited to see it come together.”

About the Author

Mark is a lifelong Northeast Ohioan and an Ohio University grad. Along with loving music, movies and television, he is crazy about sports and tech. Reach the author at mmeszoros@news-herald.com
or follow Mark on Twitter: @MarkMeszoros.